April 4, 2006

Illustrating Horris' SCARY History of Ancient Egypt

I continue along this biz-ness of drawing Horris into the ancient time of the Pharaohs' rule. Even ancient-er than the days they first started calling Kings "Pharaohs." (That little slice of nomenclature pie was cooked up in the 18th Dynasty, if I'm not mistaken, but I'm just going from memory at this point, and it's been a long time since then :)

I won't show you 99% of the illustrations here, because I don't want to spoil it for all the lovely dollar-spending people who feed me while I draw. After all, you (and I assume you are one of these magnificent patrons) spend your money on my work, and that is directly responsible for my having time to make it at all. So thank you! And I hope you get a huge kick out of Horris' latest exploits in December of 2006, when I believe it is that Horris' first triple-set will be published, and possibly even as a boxed set. We begin with (of course), the already published and rather celebrated SCARY: A Book of Horrible Things for Kids, and in December of this year, both Horris' SCARY History of Ancient Egypt and Horris' SCARY History of Dinosaurs will be published by Hylas Publishing, just as the first Horris book was. Of course, as publishing goes, it must be understood that sometimes, certain details are not fixed for a time. And so it is that I may update that release date. Watch this blog for any BREAKING HORRIS NEWS.

(Horris insisted I capitalize that, and I am not about to get into an argument on design with him. He is rather determined when he makes up his mind on the look or feel of something. I apologize for the exclamatory nature, the rather blaring nature of his text. It's only that he gets excited about everything.)

Anyway, I thought I'd take a break between a spider, and a pig as big as a pyramid at Giza to tell you what I'm up to. I'm sorry it's been so quiet around here, but that's just sort of how it works. I write in a lot of other places, and aside from that, I am usually drawing or getting my hands into something. I only keep so busy because if I stop, I'll start banging on tables and snapping and drumming with my fingers and people will get really angry and tell me I'm making them nervous and to leave the room.


zoom,

J

joaquín ramón herrera writes for children, adults, and other humans found elsewhere in the continuum of development. He is also an illustrator, musician, and surprise protagonist. If you have found his glasses, wallet, or keys, please contact him here.

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January 6, 2006

Mister Zee

The wheedling, power-mad, and poisoned Mister Zee, as Eli can see him.

I have built up the Characters area of the website, to include a tiny blurb about Mister Zee, but I do eventually want to have a pop-up for each character, as I do for Eli. I do have to, of course, balance my time between tasty little digital adventures such as these, and mine own life-type events. That "slideshow" type of character study done for Eli took me a couple hours to put together. But it was worth it.

The whole thing is in flux, really. The sketches, the characters, even the book. While my editor has it now, I'm sure there wll be a few times through before it's all settled. Like the recording of albums that I chronicled on my music blog, I can trace the making of a project, and that's fun to read through, later.

joaquín ramón herrera writes for children, adults, and other humans found elsewhere in the continuum of development. He is also an illustrator, musician, and surprise protagonist. If you have found his glasses, wallet, or keys, please contact him here.

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December 28, 2005

Illustrationing, Gently Down the Stream

I've been drawing Eli, Horris, Nini, and Iago. Trying to figure out exactly how I want them to look. The picture posted in the last post is not Eli's final look. In fact, I hope it doesn't prove to frustrating to watch me try out different looks. Perhaps I should just wait until I am done and have him figured out. But I'm pretty close.

I am going to develop this sketch of Horris comforting Eli, perhaps for the T.O.C., or some other place in the book (screened back behind the Acknowledgements area?) I like it, although I'm not sure it would fit for any of the chapter illustrations.

Anyway, I'm beginning to think in terms of the first illustration. That is, the illustration for the opening of chapter one.

Just as I wrote that, I realized that I think I know what it has to be. Of course, I can't rightly tell you, here. But I think I know what it will be. And that's good, it will give me a chance to develop Iago more. I drew up a few sketches of him, but his cheekbones need to be sharper.

I guess I should start sketching out Leevo, Mister Zee, and Melody. But I think the reason I haven't is that they come into the book later on, so they don't feel as present yet. Once I draw a few chapters worth of illos, I'm sure they will emerge, and make themselves known. I think they will both be very fun to draw. I have a good picture of Mister Zee in my mind. But Melody needs more thinking.

One illo per chapter? Hmmm. What are there, 28 chapters? Yeah. I'll be busy for a while. I have to do some research and writing on the next non-fiction book, too. I'll have to take a trip to the library soon.

joaquín ramón herrera writes for children, adults, and other humans found elsewhere in the continuum of development. He is also an illustrator, musician, and surprise protagonist. If you have found his glasses, wallet, or keys, please contact him here.

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December 22, 2005

Done with First Edit of Horris, Little Eli, and the Secret Vision

Done! The book stands now at 310 pages. I think it's safe to say it will lose a fair amount, although it will be interesting to see it shrink down to 170 pages! I guess that's about how small it would have to get to accommodate frontmatter and backmatter and all the illustrations. Perhaps it will jump up a signature or something. I don't know. But my editor did tell me to write long. So I wrote long. Or, actually, I wrote until the story came to where I had decided I would end it.

I have no idea how it will go. But to tell you the truth, I look forward to the next stage. And I had to get it out of my damn hands. It's not like I was happy with everything yet. But I had to pass it over. I mean come on. 300 pages. It's a big stack. I'm so inside of that world I can hardly see out. I need to come up for air.

As you can see, I'm playing with a multi-media, drawn/digital, Viewmaster style for the illustrations. It will not be color, sadly. But I still plan on using foreground, midground, and background. Yet another holdover from my origins in film school. Well, hell. I didn't originate in film school. I was scribbling and writing long before that. But you know what I'm saying. Shows influence. But what it really shows influence of is the Viewmaster. Because that was one more diorama I used to peer into as a child and be absolutely entranced by. I loved the half-lit world that never moved, but had blurry backgrounds, and dire, dramatic colors. Those private, shadowy, not-real/real world...I remember spider man and snoopy, and all of it seemed so fantastic. I don't expect anyone else to know what I mean here, or to see what I see. It's just a name I use to describe it to myself. I don't really think it literally looks like a viewmaster.

Anyway, yeah. I thought it would be original (I haven't really seen the style in any books I've read, at least), and really allow me to bring forth the dreamy, dark feel of the books well. I look forward to the art part of this book. I look forward to taking a break from the story, and seeing how it works on other people. And I look forward to bed. It's almost 22:00, and I've been going since about 05:45.

'Night.

joaquín ramón herrera writes for children, adults, and other humans found elsewhere in the continuum of development. He is also an illustrator, musician, and surprise protagonist. If you have found his glasses, wallet, or keys, please contact him here.

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December 7, 2005

The Illustrated Boy

I HAVE BEEN THINKING about how I want to illustrate the fiction books starring Horris. I think the non-fiction books (Horris' SCARY Guide to Egypt, Horris' SCARY Guide to Dinosaurs, etc) will continue in the cartoony, digital style that I illustrated SCARY: A Book of Horrible Things for Kids in. That will be one thing that separates the two lines of books. For I do feel I need something to keep them separate, having the same main character, and all.

The covers and spines are really up to the publishing company. But I wonder if Hylas will go for keeping the spines of the non-fic books red, and perhaps going with green for the fiction. That would be another good way to keep the two lines distinctive. Additionally, fiction fantasy just demands illustrations of the hand-drawn type, I feel. At least a novel ought to have as much.



Nini, on the cover of the manuscript for Horris, Little Eli, and the Secret Vision. On the actual cover, Eli and Horris will appear. Here, I drew Nini (and a bit of Horris) because the chapter I was currently writing was telling Nini's story.

I decided that I will use pencil to illustrate the fiction books, or at least the first one. Aside from painting the final cover with my airbrush. There is something very magical about pencil art, and the multitude of gradients and densities you can employ with just a turn of the wrist, a flutter of the hand.

And as I drew the image above (to help inspire myself as I wrote further, I just needed a different image on the top of the manuscript), I realized how much I missed hand-drawing. I've been using the computer to render my art, and while it is a lot of fun, and while you still need to understand form and light to create on it, there is nothing like your hand moving the pen or pencil or brush.

So much less interface. The more I have to negotiate the medium, the less readily I can flow. Same with when I'm recording music. To paraphrase the American mainstream media, when the wires start becoming the song, then it is time to change something. Well, using the computer for art brings some advantages (the "Undo" feature springs immediately to mind), but it sure makes the tool obtrusive. I dislike having to translate to my tool what my brain knows instinctively. Even if it only slows me one tenth of a second or causes me one extra movement. It's not that I don't believe in the investiture of energy. I hope that shows. I think of it more that I want strong, clear sound coming out of my speakers. The very strongest and the clearest I am able to manage. And every single splice in every single wire compromises that power and clarity, even if only by miniscule amounts. (At the same time, I must allow for that bit of translation and area of the learning curve that is inherent in the execution of every craft, and part of every struggle to master one's craft. Sometimes there is struggle, and discomfort, and there should be.)

As I moved the pencil I thought to myself how nice it was to want less pressure on the stroke and simply apply less pressure. To not have to reach up and smack the keys over and over to make it happen. How nice to simply move my hand, to slow down, to press harder. No need to adjust opacity slider. Such minimal conversation between my brain and the machine helping me make my art. For I am a tool I know so well. The hand turns, glides, backs up, repeats a see-saw motion 18 times rapidly, and then lightly traces a spiral forward and back. The brush size is adjusted by leaning my pencil, or at worst, shaving pieces off of the tip with an ex-acto knife, but still, how nice—to watch the shavings fall, to touch the tip of the pencil to test it. To inwardly adjust the sensitivity of the pencil pressure in such tiny increments you wouldn't be able to see them on your LCD screen to attempt them.

And mostly, how sweet it is to just visualize something on the page and skirt my hand over to to that area, speedily and surely, to rest the heel of my hand, slowly lower the point, and begin to sketch an arc—all without hesitation nor deliberation. How satisfying to shade where I like, to erase just where I like, to move around in space and ask no permission from a digital kinetic arbiter.

And, I think, these illustrations will have to serve to answer my belly everytime my Mac teases me because people think the art I make digitally somehow doesn't still need to be drawn. I caught my G5 dialing into the local paper's offices yesterday, demanding equal billing. Trying to tell the reporters that I have a "SCARY" button on my computer that I just press to come up with new Horris expressions and positions and story ideas. Clearly, I have to put an end to this kind of speculation. And maybe I should dust off the old Olivetti, while I'm at it.

joaquín ramón herrera writes for children, adults, and other humans found elsewhere in the continuum of development. He is also an illustrator, musician, and surprise protagonist. If you have found his glasses, wallet, or keys, please contact him here.

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November 29, 2005

Melody and Elegy (Nini Stays Home Sick)

DREW OUT SOME MORE of Eli's neighborhood, by hand. Still thinking about what styles I want to try out for the illos. This map is just so I can write accurately from a map. Although i hope to do a version for the endpaper, like the Hobbit books and other such books with maps. Eager to start on painting the cover. The cover I have online is temporary and I think may yet still replace it with another Temp cover, as it is. I whipped that one together pretty quickly, so they could take a temp cover to Frankfurt Book Fair.

On page 178. I still see another forty or fifty pages, if I'm not wrong. We'll see. Can't truncate the arc. Even if pages get cut, must first let the story be told to the length it wants. Definitely closing in. Few more days. Taking a lot of energy. A lot of hard concentrating. Becoming more and more of a task to hold it all in my head. Lots of notes tacked around, diagrams, drawings. footnotes, scribblings, Post-it notes. Searching for holes, trying to write them all full.

Skeleton starting to take place for second book. I'm diggin what I'm thinkin. connecting this quest to that one, one leads into the other. one made necessary by fraying ends of first one. Huge opportunity for other world, rules, geography, laws, physics, race....visuals, traps, treasures, tricks, tests. A trek through the metaphorical den of Smaug. city as lair, i see hot orange, brown, black for colors. fast, whirring, dangerous movement through the air. big red sun. we'll see. my mind painting pieces in the background. we're still in book one, and i haven't even brought them to the meadow, yet, where it all ends. almost.

Early day tomorrow. Would like to make it to, at least, page 190.

Goodnight.

joaquín ramón herrera writes for children, adults, and other humans found elsewhere in the continuum of development. He is also an illustrator, musician, and surprise protagonist. If you have found his glasses, wallet, or keys, please contact him here.

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November 25, 2005

Post Turkey Day

Don't think I'll do much writing today. I tried, but my brain is just mush from all the eating and merry-making last night in celebration of dead turkeys everywhere. I found it very annoying this morning, at 5:45, when I couldn't get the wheels turning. Felt alien, this non-productivity. I resented not having my muse sitting, waiting, when I called for her. Fine!

I did spend an hour or two this morning, sitting in the sun and sketching out Karl's latest sculpture. Intricate steel piece that works on two levels, depending how close you get to it. First sign of the road that leads to the rest of the quest.

Thought a bit more and made notes on the Four-book arc, which I fill in more and more as I think of it. Sketched and made notes on the location of a particularly important mountain-peak-which-is-a-valley-at-the-same-time. Spent some time thinking about the next chapter, but I think I'm just tired, because I couldn't really make my brain click in that direction for too long. Think I need to rest and take it easy, keep the thoughts simmering on the back burner.

These days, I'm thinking on the book all the time. Even when I'm watching movies or reading books. There is a part of my mind always working on the story. It interrupts every now and then when it figures something out. Shouts for a pen.

joaquín ramón herrera writes for children, adults, and other humans found elsewhere in the continuum of development. He is also an illustrator, musician, and surprise protagonist. If you have found his glasses, wallet, or keys, please contact him here.

(neuralpermalink established at 12:18)

November 22, 2005

Marred By A Heart

Very good day. Very good day for progress on the book. I think I'm rolling up on Act III as we speak. I can see it on the horizon.

A lot of fun stuff being written. Just wrote out the four Spells of Seasons, which are spoken in a mix of English (Eli's native tongue) and another language. I'm not sure what the other language is, but I have the spells written. They're fun to say, and sound as if they should conjure up something...so better be careful with them. I won't write them here. I really don't want to give away anything to specific here. But herm reads through the book as I write it, and she is very engaged. That's a good sign.

Closing in. Wrote about fifteen pages today. I think I have about 80 to go, give or take. And then I have to give it at least three edits myself, before I pass it on to my editor. Then I'm on to illustrations.

Yeah, at least three.

joaquín ramón herrera writes for children, adults, and other humans found elsewhere in the continuum of development. He is also an illustrator, musician, and surprise protagonist. If you have found his glasses, wallet, or keys, please contact him here.

(neuralpermalink established at 21:02)

November 21, 2005

A Glassy Onyx Eye and Two Wings That Unfurl

Well, I met my quota today, but it was a long, long day. Started at about 0600, and it's 2037, now, and I am finally printing out hard copy now. The story is getting pretty long and involved, and I've got to start a new system soon to keep track of everything that is going on. Flow charts and such.

Did an initial illo of Nini. Good starting point. I like her. I like Eli, too. Hell, I like all of them. Even Mister Zee, and Rusty and Grime Nose.

I truly love when the story surprises you. You do rough outline work, planning. You need to know what is supposed to happen and when, more or less. Nothing fixed, but you have to have guides for your free-fall. But then, after a certain point it is time to let go of planning and structure and steps. Sooner or later the time comes to let go of the ropes and just fly. And the fun parts come during those little moments of inspiration. When your fingers are just moving and moving and your eyes are burning, and you are staring right through the white of the page and into the sun of another world. It's those unplanned moments, it's all really about those unplanned moments. Those perfect little transitions or metaphors or tying up of loose ends that you hadn't even seen coming. Those bursts of creativity and invention that provide for those Perfect Lines, or those Perfect Endings, or that Perfect Twist. That part of your craft, of your mind that circles around back while you're untying the horses. How I do love that part. That is the gift. That part is the uncontrolled. That part is the part that knows what I cannot, and without which I would have no talent at all, just a restless mind and hand and heart and eye...and no way to find satisfaction.

joaquín ramón herrera writes for children, adults, and other humans found elsewhere in the continuum of development. He is also an illustrator, musician, and surprise protagonist. If you have found his glasses, wallet, or keys, please contact him here.

(neuralpermalink established at 20:44)